Compression, a mathematical technique to reduce the number of bits required to store information, is essential because image files are very large.

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"The number of bits just keeps growing, " says Pearse.

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The company will bill users for the number of digital bits that pass over the network, not the number of minutes the person is connected to the network.

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For a metropolis twice the size of another, the length of electric cables, number of gas stations and other bits of infrastructure decrease by about 15% per inhabitant.

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The volume of data in one of these alternative data streams is a function of granularity (number of measurements) and intensity (bits per measurement).

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If a detector has more than a certain number (currently 12) of contiguous bits in common with a passing packet, the detector is deleted, and a new detector is generated to replace it.

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Nick Bilton of the New York Times Bits blog wrote a post the other day about how despite having grown his number of Facebook subscribers to a healthy 400, 000, he noticed that his actual engagement numbers (likes and shares) had plummeted per post into the low double digits.

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And without any grand programme, Mr Smith is also cutting the number of basic car platforms (the chassis and drive-train mechanical bits that make the wheels go round) from 16 to eight, in line with best practice at firms such as Ford, Volkswagen and Toyota.

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